The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, and Other East African Adventures

The most terrifying true story of man-eating lions ever recorded. In 1898, two enormous lions descended on the campsite of railway workers in Tsavo, Kenya, and began systematically hunting humans. For nine months, they killed and devoured an estimated 100 workers, bringing construction of the Uganda Railway to a standstill. The workers called them the demons of Tsavo. No trap worked. No fence held. The lions seemed unstoppable. J.H. Patterson, the Irish engineer tasked with building the railway, took it upon himself to stop them. What followed was a harrowing cat-and-mouse game across the African bush, with Patterson narrowly escaping death multiple times before finally killing both lions. But this book is more than a hunting story. It is a window into colonial East Africa, into the brutal conditions faced by Indian laborers, and into a primal fear that has haunted humans for millennia. Theodore Roosevelt called it the most remarkable account of man-eating lions in recorded history. A century later, it remains unmatched.